Scattered Lawn Gnomes
by OneDarkandStormyNight
Summary: Twenty-four-year-old Ferb is trapped on an island set for self-destruct. His brother, Phineas, is flying over that same island, on his way to an inventors' conference. Doof is being attacked by newts. And Fate thinks everyone has been apart far too long.
1. Chapter 1

_So...guess who went on a two-week trip to Germany and totally forgot that she had three chapters of a new story written up, waiting for publication?  
Guilty.  
Normally, I'm not actually one for "grown-up"-version stories, especially for kids' shows that I like just as they are, but this idea got into my head and wouldn't go away. I really wanted a way to reassure myself that, if Phineas and Ferb ever actually _did_ grow up (which they won't, but y'know what I mean), they would be able to stay together and everything would be same as when they were kids. I know all of us wish that was possible, huh? hehe  
Before you think, "Oh, brother, another lame grown-up fic," let me assure you that I've tried to keep it as much like the shows as possible, just with a bit of my own flare *wink*. I really hope you readers enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!_

* * *

**Chapter One**

This was the first time Sarah Harrison had ever been to a robotic island before.

Was she enjoying it? Not at all. Was she regretting it with every fiber of her being? Yes; yes, she was.

Oh, it had sounded nice. An entire week of all-expenses-paid trip to the world's first manmade island built entirely of steel and computer. Purified waterfalls so clean one could drink the water, reformed plants systematically dyed with every hue of the visible spectrum, animals and people relaxed with a new, harmless, airborne drug to the point that it was possible to snuggle a tropical snake without fear…and most importantly, the _science_. She and her teammates would be given the opportunity to monitor the progress of this fantastic island for three entire weeks, just because they were the best scientists which could be found.

Yes, it had sounded perfect.

Nobody said anything about a fifty-something-year-old German scientist appearing out of nowhere and attempting to claim the island for himself using an army of newts, or of the supposedly well-trained technicians' running around like half-mad idiots for three hours before fleeing with every emergency vehicle available—including one rolling cart, or of the evil scientist's _(Doofenshmirtz? Was that really German, anyway?)_ quite suddenly being driven away by a platypus in a black fedora. (This was according to the man who had attempted to escape on the rolling cart and had seen the oddly diplomatic battle between the gawky man and aquatic mammal before being forced to swim back to shore.)

Now, here they were—five people with no violent pasts and no protocols for what to do when stuck on a deserted island in the middle of the Caribbean with no way to communicate with anyone not standing right beside them. All because nobody had bothered alerting them at their resort when someone named Doof had attacked in the middle of the night.

Just great.

"I wish Phineas were here," said a very annoyingly high-pitched voice from somewhere to her right.

Baljeet, one of the programmers and obviously a native of India, looked forlornly down at a battered communications screen, which sat still occasionally sparking with electricity in the main district of the Cycle Control Center. The place was supposed to be invincible, but apparently the designers had not taken into account the possibility of assaulting newts.

Newts. Really. She still did not understand it. This Doofenshmirtz sounded like a real winner.

She, the other program designer, and the trembling security guard (still shivering from his unsuccessful attempt to escape on a rolling cart) looked at him as though he had lost his mind. Of all the things to say after having just discovered they were trapped here until someone realized they were missing, that was definitely the most ambiguous.

The tall, lean young man standing beside the Indian—the one with the strangely natural-looking green hair and whose name tag read simply "Ferb Fletcher"—seemed to understand, however. Of course, he and Baljeet seemed to have known one another already (it was difficult not to know this, as Baljeet's obnoxiously childish voice crying "Oh, Ferb! You are here too! It is fate that we are brought to this wonderful place of learning together!" in the airport at California was hard to misunderstand), so perhaps this "Phineas" person was a mutual acquaintance.

Ferb was almost eerily silent, she'd noted from the beginning. He was tall and thin in a way that made most young men look awkward, but gave him an effortless appearance of grace and intelligence. His hair was, without condition or uncertainty, green, and stuck out at just the right angles on his head to make it look easy and professional all at once. He wore the same clothes he had during their flight the day before—a white button-down and faded plum-colored corduroy trousers. It looked like an old ensemble, but it suited him, she thought. His caramel eyes shifted with a look of almost intimidating intelligence, his small mouth constantly set in a straight line, as if he was thinking deeply always. He did not speak—not ever, to anyone, unless it was absolutely necessary; he only watched, and acknowledged Baljeet when the worrisome student addressed him. He was different, for sure.

Now, at Baljeet's words, he looked up at his old friend. Somehow, his eyes seemed slightly more thoughtful, and a brief and almost invisible look of sadness flickered across his sharp face before vanishing again.

"Right," said the other program designer—Rob, apparently a dedicated Texan, if his ten-gallon hat and raspy slang gave any indication—with a tinge of sarcasm. "What now?"

"What do you mean, what now?" exclaimed the jittery security guard, Mike, rubbing his chubby hands together and loosening his tie around his pudgy neck. "We're trapped here, that's what. Might as well lie on the ground with paper bags over our heads, 'cause here's where we're going to die."

"Must you be so dramatic?" Sarah demanded, tired of hearing the man snivel. "So we're stuck here for a little while; all we have to do is wait until we're rescued. Someone will be back for us, eventually. And in the meantime, we'll eat the food at the resort and live in the nice, furnished rooms, just like we were supposed to."

"Well, you'd better start eating now, if you plan to enjoy another meal on this death trap," choked the red-faced man with a sardonic huff.

"W-what do you mean?" questioned Baljeet, his brown face shadowed with sudden dread, as he moved a little closer to Ferb, who remained impassive.

The shadows of the lightless room stretched weirdly over the man's face as he answered, voice low with somberness,

"The head technicians set the timer before they left us here."

"Meaning?" pressed Rob.

"Meaning that in exactly nine hours and three minutes, Bendita Isla will be a million tiny metal pieces at the bottom of the ocean and we'll be singing _Hallelujah_ on a cloud."

There was a brief silence as the words hung in the air, and then, uneasily,

"But I do not know _Hallelujah_."

Ferb tilted his head to glance at his quivering Indian friend.

Rob rolled his eyes and swore under his breath.

Sarah paled.

Mike continued to shake.

* * *

"Hey, Isabella, where's Perry?"

Isabella Flynn looked up from where she was arranging her boyfriend's clothes in his suitcase, but continued to smooth the wrinkles from the beloved orange-and-white striped T-shirt as she answered,

"I don't know, Phineas. I saw him outside by the street an hour ago. I don't know where he could've gotten to."

Phineas Flynn—_world-renowned inventor_ Phineas Flynn—entered the room, fumbling to redo the strap on his wristwatch after having been tinkering with its mechanisms all morning. (It was a habit to apply all his latest designs to it, if possible. He claimed it was for testing purposes, but Isabella knew he secretly just liked the watch.)

She smiled when she saw him. She always did. She just couldn't help herself when she saw his tangerine locks, sticking up in all directions like wild flames from his head. Even after a year and four months (and twelve days and eighteen hours, the part of her mind dedicated only to Phineas provided) of steady dating, those bright, round, eager blue eyes beaming at her with all their full wonderment never ceased to astound her. And when his delightful face lit up with that familiar, playful grin…? She might as well have turned to mush.

"I wanted to say good-bye to him before we leave," he was saying in a voice that had never actually changed in all the years she'd known him, as he grabbed his wallet and tucked it into his jeans. "Ah, well. I'm sure he'll be okay until we get back."

"It's only for a couple of days, at least," she chimed, hauling their bags from the bed and blowing a strand of dark hair from her eyes. "We'll be back here before he even knows we're gone."

Phineas shrugged with a fond smirk and took the heavy bags from her obligingly.

"I think he'll notice," he said. "After all, he's been sleeping at the foot of my bed since I was ten. But he's smart; he knows we'll be back soon. I wouldn't leave him."

"And Mrs. Barker agreed to check in on him every day," added Isabella. "So even if his food machine breaks, he won't go without eating for very long."

"It won't break," guaranteed Phineas. "Ferb helped me build it. Nothing of his ever messes up."

Isabella knew that if she was not so in-tune with her boyfriend from years of closeness, she would have missed the slight change in his voice on that last sentence. There was an unmistakable undertone of something she'd never quite heard there before; it sounded much like a subtle longing, or perhaps regret. She didn't like it; it sounded plainly wrong tainting the voice of the kindest and most cheerful man she knew.

Still, she knew its source. There was only one thing in Phineas' extraordinary life which could make him unhappy; she'd been expecting it for a long time, in fact.

When Phineas and Ferb had graduated a year ahead of time from the same university (with an incredible amount of awards and notoriety, she added in her head proudly), there had been a distinct sadness between them at their having to go their separate ways. Isabella didn't think that they realized just how big of a change it would be. It had been four full months since they had seen one another, and they hadn't even spoken in three weeks, with Phineas' big conference overseas to advertise his latest enormous and fantastic designs and Ferb's important trip to evaluate the new robotic island that was about to be opened to the public.

They had never been more than a few hours away from each other since they'd met as only small toddlers. Their bond was one which had been immediate and unique, and by the time they were pre-teens, it had reached the point that one did not usually say "Phineas" without adding "and Ferb" to it. Even though they were both young adults now, and more self-reliant than ever, it seemed definitely wrong and unfair that they had to be so far separated; Isabella had always felt in her heart that Phineas and Ferb were never supposed to be like other brothers. Phineas needed Ferb; Ferb needed Phineas. That was how it was supposed to be; that's how it _worked_.

It almost made her angry at the world for changing and making them all grow up.

Her eyes softened and she rubbed her hand against the curve of his shoulder.

"You should call Ferb, Phineas," she urged gently. "I'm sure he'd be thrilled to hear from you."

Phineas looked up at her, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he marveled at how well she could read him.

"It's not really the same," he said, the tinge of sadness stronger now that he knew he was not fooling her. "I can't really explain it, but talking on the phone with him is not anything like being with him in person. It's…weird."

"He never was one for talking," she sighed.

"No," he agreed. "Of course, I mostly talk…well, babble," (Isabella smirked at this), "and he mostly listens, just like always. But I can't see him; I can't tell if he likes my ideas and if he agrees with my theories or…what he's thinking, at all. I have to guess what each silence means. It's not his fault, of course," he was quick to add; "that's just who he is. I've never wanted him to be any different. It's just not…."

"…fun?" she provided helpfully.

He sighed.

"Yeah. I love to talk to him and tell him all that's going on, but I don't like being so far away. It's not…"

"…cool?" she interjected again.

He chuckled lightly.

"Not cool at all."

"I wish there was some way you could both still do what you love, and work together, just like you used to. Remember the roller coaster?" She gripped his arm excitedly. "That was one of my favorites."

He smiled, eyes alighting again with that familiar sparkle.

"Mine too. The musical was even more fun, though."

"Yeah. Where'd that music come from, anyway?"

"I don't know. That's why it was fun."

She laughed aloud.

"I wonder if it would still play, if we started singing now." She did not pause before bursting out into song, "_Bow chicka-wow-wow. That's what my baby says._"

"_Maw-maw-maw. And my heart starts pumpin',"_ he chimed in.

The music started up again, somewhere.

They looked around the room.

"Still works," he declared happily once it had died down.

She laughed again, and they grabbed their suitcases and rushed to catch their flight to Panama City.

Two minutes later, Perry waddled into the room from a secret passage in the bookshelf, having left his cherished hat in the agent instruction room two stories below the house and completely unaware that his beloved master's brother was trapped on an island three thousand miles away…and that Phineas himself was about to fly over that same island, totally oblivious to the adventure that was to change all their lives.

**To be continued**


	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks a bunch to everyone who reviewed Chapter One. I'm glad you took an interest in this fic.  
And, totally random and off-topic, I know, but who besides me is dying for the new P&F movie? Just heard the new duet with Slash for it, and it made me all the more impatient...  
Anyways, not what you came here for, right? hehe_

* * *

**Chapter Two**

"Can you build a radio, Ferb?" Baljeet was asking for the twelfth time in the past thirty minutes, as he, Sarah, Rob, and Mike paced at different paths in the Cycle Control Center.

Ferb rolled out from beneath a broken machine, a wrench in one hand and some indefinable, handmade tool in the other. He shook his head once at Baljeet, narrow shoulders shrugging faintly with the unspoken answer that the wreckage Doofenshmirtz's newts had left behind was too great for even him to conquer.

Baljeet moaned, loudly, burying his face in his hands.

"Oh, we are doomed…doomed, I tell you! Why, oh why did I ever agree to come to this tropical pitfall? I should have known it would all end in tears!"

And with that, he began to sob uncontrollably.

Ferb rose from the ground and replaced his tools into his pockets, where they were safely stored, practically invisible. He did not speak, but moved to stand beside his Indian friend so that he was not quite touching him, but was close enough to offer his own peculiar brand of comfort. It did not help Baljeet's hysterics, much to the misfortune of all present.

"Hey there," Rob drawled, throwing a whole fish he'd found in the freezer within the resort over his shoulder and waving a broken chair leg at Baljeet (he had insisted upon collecting firewood, even while Mike was insisting it would be useless since they were destined to die within seven hours), "Indiana, could you please stop your yapping? You'll scare away the firewood."

"You can't scare away firewood, Rob," Sarah told him.

"Baljeet could," he countered, tossing the fish down on a still-hot machine and poking it with the chair leg.

Baljeet sniveled louder.

Ferb inhaled and removed his cell phone from his pocket, scrolling down the list of names until he reached the one he'd been trying for the past two hours. His finger hovered over the "Call" button beneath Phineas' name again, and then he glanced up past the picture of himself and his brother (the one taken by Isabella, with Phineas holding a detailed draft of an invention design and Ferb holding the completed invention) and looked to the top of the screen. "No service" still stood out in bold, unpromising letters.

He replaced it back into his trouser pocket beside the steel-cutting device Phineas had designed for him years before and kept his gaze dolefully to the floor for a few moments before looking up again at his companions.

"There is no way to restart the power, either," Sarah was saying, as she struggled to read the symbols on a broken and flickering screen nearby, "not with the countdown started."

"That's what I've been saying for the past two hours," bellowed Mike unhelpfully, as he sank into a shadowed corner, clutching the tiny stuffed bear he'd pulled out of his pocket an hour before (at least, the bear was tiny in comparison to him).

Ferb narrowed his eyes suddenly, and without warning, his four colleagues heard his low, arresting English voice for the very first time.

"Do you hear that?"

Baljeet's wailing halted immediately, Rob stopped poking the limp fish with his stick, Mike pulled his face from where it was pressed into his teddy in an attempt to hide, and Sarah turned around with surprised eyes.

Exactly three seconds later, a hoard of laser-shooting newts the size of plates exploded into the Cycle Control Center.

Everyone screamed—except Ferb, of course.

* * *

Isabella was just making herself comfortable, shifting against the pillows on the soft seat of their private jet—sent with compliments by Phineas' employer, the head of BiRo Enterprises. (BiRo was short for "Big Robots," a name which Phineas had said several times since the day he was hired as a designer he would change immediately to something at least three notches higher on the imagination scale, should he ever become CEO. Isabella hoped this would be a reality someday.)

She had just settled into the comfy seat and shut her eyes for a short nap when a sharp _BeepBeepBeep_ pulled her violently from her dozing.

She looked around to see that Phineas, who was seated directly beside her, had removed his tweaked GPS—which was, in actuality, a broken Global Positioning System he had restored entirely with his own gears and programs—and was clicking away at its screen, his thick, orange brows knitted together pensively.

"What's wrong, Phineas?" she asked, concerned at the shadow across his boyishly handsome face.

"Ferb loaded the coordinates for his destination into this thing," he answered, not looking up from the GPS. "He wanted me to check the energy output for the Bendita Isla; he thought it would be interesting for me."

"So?" She shifted around to face him.

"So…I'm seeing an island, for sure. But no energy output."

"Maybe it's a different island," she suggested.

He shook his head, flame waves bouncing.

"The upcoming coordinates are the ones Ferb gave me, and Ferb is never wrong," he said darkly.

"So?" she asked again.

"So…I don't understand why there would be no energy being emitted, if this is supposed to be a robotic island, and all that."

She was quiet, unable to provide an answer to that.

On impulse, Phineas removed his cell phone from his jacket pocket.

"What cha doing?" questioned Isabella. "We're not supposed to have cell phones out on the jet, are we?"

"No, but it'll just be for a minute," he assured her. "I just want to call Ferb and see what's going on."

She nodded agreeably.

Phineas dialed and held the phone to his ear for several minutes, before placing it down again.

"Huh," was his comment.

"What?" she urged.

"It's saying that it can't go through. But that's weird, because Ferb fixed up his cell so that it would work practically anywhere."

"What does that mean?"

He twisted his lips thoughtfully for a moment, before responding,

"I don't know."

Before she could ask "What cha doing?" he had leapt up and was calling to the pilot.

"Ted! Hey, Ted! Can you land on this island up ahead? Yeah—just a short detour. Won't be long—promise."

* * *

At the same time, a sleeping platypus was being lifted from his comfortable chair in Phineas' apartment. He remained slumbering, purring quietly with contentment, even when he slid all the way down a long, worn metallic shaft and into a much less comfortable chair before a vast screen.

On the screen, an aged man with fake white hair and an even more fake mustache appeared.

"Agent P!"

The small aquatic mammal did not start as most probably would have—used to the treatment as he was—but instead, he opened one brown eye with a wavering tolerance for his long-time superior.

"Agent P," Major Monogram looked exceedingly relieved, "I'm so glad we reached you."

Perry quirked an eyebrow in a way no other agent of the organization could.

Major Monogram had the decency to look awkward.

"Right." He cleared his throat. "Well, we have an emergency, Agent P."

Perry rolled his eyes.

"Apparently," Major Monogram continued as though he hadn't seen it, "when you destroyed Doofenshmirtz's Newtinator, something went very wrong. This is footage we received from the Doof's ship six and a half minutes ago."

The screen crackled, and the image was replaced with a fuzzier one of what Perry immediately recognized as the inside of his nemesis' old aircraft. Doofenshmirtz himself was in the picture, but appeared to be even more madcap than usual, half-covered, as he was, in enormous newts—all of which appeared to be chewing through his outdated, white lab coat as though it were a thin leaf.

"Hello!" Doofenshmirtz, whose nails-on-a-chalkboard voice had only increased in unpleasantness with age, shouted even as he was yanked out of the shot by the relentless amphibians; he was using one hand to move the camera so that it followed him, while the other arm was waving wildly in the air in an attempt to throw off the creatures.

This only seemed to make them hang on all the tighter.

"Major Monogram!" Doofenshmirtz continued to call craggily. "Are you there? Hello!"

There was a crash somewhere in the background. The wall behind him appeared to be wiggling, but a closer look revealed hundreds of steadily-growing newts climbing desperately all over everything.

"Well, this is a little awkward," the evil scientist admitted uncomfortably—or at least as uncomfortable as is possible for one covered in slimy newts. "I know you've already sent Perry the Platypus to foil my evil scheme for today, but I've run into a bit of unexpected trouble with my Newtinator."

He released a sharp exclamation of uneasy laughter, which turned to a cry of pain as one of the larger newts took hard hold of his index finger.

"The newts have…erm…grown," he stammered, as he hopped around on one foot, shaking both his arm and his taken leg, "and the laser-eye thing I gave them is not helping the problem. I think they might also be getting smarter….It is sort of obvious that I am needing a bit of backup," he shouted now, sounding quite desperate, as he wriggled his hand to free it from the persistent mouth.

Gradually, the amphibians began to grow larger and larger, overpowering the mad German until he was slowly collapsing, his ever-wild eyes poking from his oddly-shaped head as it looked like he was being engulfed by a sea of ridiculously enormous newts.

As Doofenshmirtz's gurgling screams died out beneath the waves of newts, one large newt, looking unnaturally alert and intelligent, leapt in front of the camera. He reared back one slick fist and punched forward, blacking out the scene.

"In the past five minutes," Major Monogram stated matter-of-factly as he reappeared, "this Doof-made phenomenon has reached massive proportions. Since who-knows-how-many newts had already been released upon the Bendita Isla, which you went to earlier—remember, Agent P?"

Perry blinked forbearingly.

"Well, we fear that it could progress and do an untold amount of damage to this expensive, new island. This, plus we have reason to believe there may be at least three people left on the island with these mutated newts—one of whom just happens to be a member of your assigned family, Ferb Fletcher."

Perry's entire demeanor changed immediately, his face sharpening with attention and eyes clouding with concern.

"You've got to put a stop to this, Agent P," Monogram instructed him.

Without wasting another moment, Perry leapt to his feet—his back feet, that is—and grabbed his beloved hat from somewhere above, placing it decidedly upon his head and grabbing the fastest jet pack lent to him from the agency.

Not only was Dr. Doofenshmirtz in danger, but Ferb as well, this time. Doofenshmirtz's being in peril was enough for him to worry; after all, the bond between an evil scientist and his nemesis is not one which can be easily replaced. Ferb's life at risk, however, made it twice as personal to him.

Perry put the jets on full-throttle for Bendita Isla.

**To be continued**


	3. Chapter 3

_Sorry about taking so long to update. I went on an unexpected trip to Charleston, SC, and wasn't able to write much while I was there. Saw a bunch of oysters, though. Heh. And I also didn't want to post until I saw the new movie, so I'd know whether or not the boys know about Perry's being a secret agent. That made a difference to the storyline.  
Anyway, this chapter was fun to write, because so many people randomly pop up. You'll see what I mean.  
Many thanks to everyone for the reviews!_

* * *

**Chapter Three**

Meanwhile, in a dark storage room somewhere in the Cycle Control Center of the Bendita Isla, five people were squeezed tightly together, scrunched up in hiding while the strange sounds of giant newts crawling around just outside the door filled their ears. At length, the movement died out, leaving them all with nothing but the noise of their own pounding heartbeats.

"Is the coast clear, kid?" Rob's whisper sounded like shouting in the breathless silence.

Baljeet, who had the best access to the door (given that his nose was flattened against its cold steel), shifted slightly so that he could reach the handle. Gradually, a crack of light sliced through the darkness, until one of his wide, dark brown eyes could peer through it, out into the dim hall.

Ferb dipped his head below Baljeet's arm. (This was no easy feat, for the young engineer's natural height was more than enough to cause him discomfort in the cramped space already.) His honey-coloured eyes seemed an even lighter brown in the beam, as he and his friend looked out to see long claw marks scarring the steel wall before them.

"Since when do newts even have claws?" Baljeet exclaimed.

Everyone shushed him.

Ferb raised an eyebrow at his Indian friend's words. Too loud or not, he was correct—normal newts did not have claws. And definitely _not_ that size.

Talk about discovering something that doesn't exist.

"Would you shut up, Benjy?" barked Mike sharply from the darkness behind him.

"It's 'Baljeet,' Mike," Sarah told him. "Benjy is a TV dog."

"Do you want to attract the beasts?" the overweight security guard blustered, obviously not caring in the least what his colleagues' names were.

Without warning, Ferb suddenly shut the door as quickly and silently as possible, shrouding the room in complete darkness again.

"Ferb…!" Sarah's cry was broken off as the young man pushed them all back away from the door.

Baljeet could barely distinguish Ferb's face in the darkness, and could see his friend holding a finger to his lips.

"Shh!" he hissed, so the others would know as well.

Surely enough, just on the outside of the door, a newt the size of a shopping cart was pacing the hall with a large and complex-looking weapon at his side. It was too late, however, to avoid his hearing the five hidden in the closet only a few feet away.

Sarah bit her lip as the noise of the large creature approaching grew louder and louder. Baljeet muffled a whimper when its sticky foot began to rattle the door handle.

All jolted when a loud, booming sound erupted on the other side of the door. Mike closed his eyes and prayed to be saved.

Then, there was nothing but a peculiar sort of silence.

After a few quiet minutes, Ferb braved the unknown and opened the door a mere crack. Brown eyes widened with astonishment as his gaze fell upon the figure on the other side.

Baljeet let out a startled—and perhaps slightly alarmed—cry.

"Buford!"

The once-child bully, now a full-grown bully, had hardly changed at all, except that he was now two-and-a-half times bigger than he had been in elementary school. He looked slightly bored and even more-than-slightly annoyed as he sniffed at the unconscious newt at his feet the same way he had sniffed at nerds in chemistry class.

"W-what are you doing here?" Baljeet stammered, as the five of them filed out of the closet.

"I heard the world's best meatloaf was served here," he answered, voice even rougher than it had been last time they had talked. "But by the time I got here, the place was empty and I couldn't find the kitchen."

Both Ferb and Baljeet found themselves oddly relieved to know that their old friend/bully was still the same Buford. It was somewhat difficult to imagine him any different. There's not much developing a big, spiky-haired meatloaf-eater can do, after all.

"Why were you guys in a closet?" Buford went on, showing more curiosity than surprise that this was where he found them.

His tone suggested he, too, felt his old friends hadn't changed much.

"We were hiding from those monsters, of course!" Mike exploded; at the same time, Sarah was asking Ferb quietly and with confused amazement, "How many weird people do you know around here?"

Ferb blinked at her as Buford nodded at Mike.

"Enough," the young Englishman murmured in answer, eyeing Buford as he clamped Baljeet on the shoulder, making the much smaller man wince and nearly fall over right on top of the insentient newt.

* * *

"Are you sure you want to land here, Phin?" Ted questioned dubiously, brown eyes glancing back to Phineas as he removed his hat and scratched the kinky hair. "No one's coming in at the tower."

"Can you still land it?" asked Isabella nervously.

"Well, yeah," he replied, his slight accent giving testament to an odd mixture of South African and New York English. "Doesn't look like there's much to hit down there; I think I could manage, if you're positive you want to land there. You might be late for your meeting, you know."

"Honestly, I don't think it makes much difference now whether I _want_ to land there or not," Phineas said, sapphire-blue eyes fixed on the sky ahead.

"Why?"

"Because we're about to crash."

Ted and Isabella wheeled around just in time to see a plane with no pilot coming straight for their own aircraft. They barely had time to blink before the Apple-a-Day Safety System (designed by Phineas) initiated its programmed protocol, slipping automatic, apple-shaped parachutes on them all with large, mechanical hands and ejecting them out into the big, blue atmosphere.

A second later, their jet hit the approaching plane head-on and both crafts were blown apart by the force of the collision.

As bits and pieces flew through the air before him, there were several beats of stunned silence, and then Ted exclaimed,

"_What just happened?"_

"Look there!" Isabella cried back, pointing several hundred meters below them.

They followed her gaze to see a group of college-aged girls floating rather lazily to the ground in much the same way they were.

Phineas quirked an eyebrow and tilted his head, trying to better see the colorful, two-initialed emblem on the girl's parachute closest to him. It looked very familiar, he thought….

Eventually, they all reached the ground, and the girls were just removing their own parachutes when Phineas landed nearby.

A gasp reached his ears.

"Phineas!" came a girlish squeal, which was subsequently followed by a whole female chorus of, "Isabella!"

The two looked to see themselves surrounded by a circle of girls, all wearing decorated Girl Scouts sashes.

"The Fireside Girls?" Isabella cried, recognizing every one of her old crew immediately. "What are you doing here?"

"We were on our way to pick you up for a surprise Fireside Girl Scouts reunion," explained Katie.

"But then our plane lost all power for some reason," continued Holly. "So we had to evacuate."

"Sorry about hitting your jet," apologized Adyson.

"That's okay," said Phineas brightly. "It was kind of an old model, anyway. Gives me something new to work on. We should probably figure out a way to get off this island, though."

"Phineas has an important conference in Panama City," added Isabella. "We don't want to be late."

At that moment, an outburst of amazement erupted from a clump of unusually-shaped trees nearby. They all followed the sound to where Ted was standing at the verge of a cliff, staring down at something obviously interesting.

Phineas, Isabella, and the Girl Scouts gathered around him, edging their toes as close as they dared and leaning forward to see what the older man found so captivating.

Phineas felt his mouth fall open as his eyes drank in the scene before him. Endless miles of jungle shimmered in the setting sun; the tops of the trees were not the traditional green, however, but glowed with all shades of every color imaginable, all blending in odd directions together like stained glass so far below. Rivers as clear and blue as sapphire seemed motionless from where they stood. Narrow mountains made of a glossy, dark, rock-like substance rose and fell across the landscape, dotted with the twisted, tropical trees; the tallest of which included a sparkling waterfall which bounced off the projecting rocks in its vertical path downward. Birds of every size and shape and color glided high above the jungles, their extraordinary feathers adorning the skies with more hues than the vivid sunset. Wispy clouds were scattered over the scenery.

Not surprisingly, every one of them had a silver lining.

It was like looking at some virtual world designed by overly-imaginative video gamers. Phineas wondered what Ferb's reaction had been when he saw it, what with his being the World Champion video game wizard. He could just imagine that sharp intake of breath and the slight twitch of the lithe right hand when his caramel eyes fell upon the amazing technology that made all this amazingness possible.

Phineas found himself wishing he'd seen Ferb's reaction with his own eyes.

There was a chorus of "Wow!" from behind him.

"Hey—what's that?"

Phineas followed Ted's gaze to the center of the landscape. Looking closely, he could see something like the roof of a building gleaming in the last lights of day. It was a compound, he realized, in the middle of the jungle.

"That must be where Ferb is," he said, and he could feel deep within his gut that deep-rooted, familiar intuition he always used to get when it concerned his brother.

"Well," said Isabella, sounding oddly like a certain, optimistic eleven-year-old girl who used to come over to his house in his younger years, "there's only one way to find out. What do you say, girls?"

The small group cheered, and Phineas was taken with a memory of all of them, standing in his yard under that old maple tree, planning and working and knowing that they would be successful at whatever they did, because where one lacked, another was stronger.

A feeling of longing swept over him. He really wanted his brother.

"The question is," Ted was saying, rubbing stubble-peppered jaw, "how do we get down there? This cliff is way too sheer to try climbing."

At that, Isabella and the Fireside Girls immediately turned to Phineas, watching him with eyes different colors and shapes, but all possessing the same, established expectancy.

"Hm…" He thought, briefly. Then, "I have an idea!"

The Fireside Girls grinned.

* * *

It did not take a great amount of time for Agent P to locate Dr. Doofenshmirtz's aircraft; his was the only purple blimp in the sky with a giant **DOOFENSHMIRTZ EVIL INC.** painted in large, menacing letters on the side, after all—and also the only one with giant newts wiggling over the windows.

Perry swooped skillfully under the blimp, entering through the platypus-sized hole he had made only hours before and which the evil scientist had obviously not had time to fix yet.

He landed elegantly, posed with both webbed feet sturdy on the floor and large eyes narrowed to absorb his surroundings. He was not expecting it when he rose to his full height and found himself staring at two-dozen newts the size of humans, all of which were positioned at various points across the room—some seated at highly complex-looking computers, some pouring iron bullets into technically-advanced firearms, and some merely standing around looking intently at blueprints.

There was a long silence as the aquatic mammal regarded the aquatic salamanders expressionlessly. Then, without warning, Perry was suddenly encased with dozens of slick and aggressive newts with uncharacteristically long claws and sharp teeth.

He threw his arms out, succeeding in throwing five of them into a nearby wall. He had hardly the time to blink, however, before eight more were clinging stubbornly to him.

The much-smaller mammal fought wildly for a solid nine minutes, before he was finally overtaken by the shockingly strong creatures and forcibly dragged down a long hallway of the Doof-craft.

Perry was tossed into a dark, metallic hole, and before he could recover himself, a heavy-looking grate was placed over the top of it with a loud, final-sounding _clang_. The gross noise of the newts' slimy footsteps died away into stillness.

In his peripheral vision, he detected movement to his right.

"Well," said a crude and sarcastic and entirely too familiar German accent into the dimness of the pit, "I certainly hope Monogram is clever enough to send backup."

Perry let out a _"Ctrctrctr"_ of agreement.

**To be continued**

* * *

_It made me chuckle a bit when one reviewer, **AnimationNut**, mentioned she (I'm assuming it's a 'she') was half-expecting Buford to show up randomly; I had already had this chapter written at the time, and I just want to say Congrats! for predicting that.  
Next chapter explains what's going on, so bear with me._


	4. Chapter 4

_Sorry about another delay! School starts Friday, and so I've been desperately searching the jungle we call a mall for shoes and bags and other extremely useful (*cough*) items for a young schoolgirl to have. Many thanks to all my wonderful reviewers! And also, I'm a fan of clubs (as in, groups of people with mutual interests, not the dancing kind *haha*), and a friend and I started self-proclaiming membership in the Resistance from Across the Second Dimension. Anyone else want to join us?  
Let me know in a review, and thank you for all the ones you've left so far!_

* * *

**Chapter Four**

Ferb gently nudged Baljeet back out of the light as he peered carefully around a corner into the main control room. They had been gone from it less than an hour, but in that time, it seemed to have acquired a whole new life. Loud sounds of clanging metal and whirring computers and the _squish-squash_ of highly intellectual newts' feet filled the air around it, and when Ferb cautiously looked into the room, he found that the newts—this set now apparently having stopped growing at the size of large children (or small adults…whichever worked)—had formed an entire engineer and technician team and were using professional tools gathered from somewhere and a connection of energy from an unknown source to rebuild and combine the machines for their own obviously nefarious purposes.

Though what those purposes could possibly be, he could not fathom.

"What are they doing, Ferb?" Baljeet whispered from behind Sarah.

Ferb raised his finger to his lips and motioned for them all to move away. He waited until they were a safe distance down the dim hall before speaking, to their combined amazement, considerably more than three syllables at a time,

"It appears as though they are harnessing the island's power, and building something else—something…bigger."

"That's it?" Buford blurted. "That's all you got?" He crossed his thick arms over his broad chest. "Man, I should've looked myself. Maybe I could've spotted some food, at least."

Ferb's square, fawn eyes rolled upward at that, and none other of his features needed to move to plainly express his thoughts at his old associate's attitude.

"So…what do we do now, partner?" questioned Rob, as he was still straightening the rim of his hat from where it had been realigned in the tight space of the closet previously.

Ferb looked down contemplatively for a moment, but then Sarah spoke for him.

"Maybe we should start by getting as far enough away from here as possible," she suggested sensibly. "We should try to make it to the waterway resort on the other side of the island; maybe they have boats or something there that can help us off this Caribbean death trip."

Ferb nodded in agreement.

"But we've got to get out of here first," pointed out Buford.

"Which is near-impossible, mind you," added Mike uselessly.

"And what about the creatures outside?" quivered Baljeet. "It is nearly dark now. Who knows what sort of animals will be coming out, and the calming gas has stopped with the power."

"Well, it's either the little snakes and bats outside, runt," said Buford, "or them."

They followed his chubby, pointing finger to where a fire-eyed newt—considerably larger than his cerebral brethren—stood, inhaling deeply with clenched fists, its claws gleaming in the low lights of the hall as its fingers popped.

They stared at it for a moment before screaming and running toward the door marked "_Exit_."

* * *

"Ah, Phin," drawled Ted, as he fumbled ineptly with the braided vines surrounding him, "not that I don't trust you, but…are you sure this is going to work?"

"Relax, Ted," said Isabella in her most confident tone, as the other Fireside Girls grinned assuredly around them. "We've done this sort of thing hundreds of times. Phineas has never let us down."

"Not once," agreed Milly perkily, as she tightened the green knot on the enormous, purple leaf above her head.

"Ready, gang?" called Phineas enthusiastically, as he made his own finishing touches to the makeshift totally-original-and-cool-leafy-and-flowery-hang-glider-thingy, before letting it go again so that it positioned itself cumbersomely in a strategically arranged layout.

Gretchen tossed her head, her strawberry blonde hair bouncing as she threw a remarkably furry and colorful caterpillar from her oval glasses when it fell down from the large, auburn flower which was her own hang glider.

"Follow me, now, and do what I do!" Phineas commanded, and got a distant running start, starting at the edge of the emerald-colored grass nearby and moving with increasing speed toward the edge of the cliff.

Ted swallowed.

"Aren't you a pilot?" asked one of the closest Fireside Girls—Ginger. "And you're scared of heights?"

"I'm not scared of heights," he defended himself and his masculinity. "I'm scared of falling."

She and another one of them—Adyson?—giggled at him, and then Phineas' voice rose above their quiet mirth.

"_Whoo-hoo!"_

Isabella disappeared just after him, her exclamations of pure, childlike glee combining with her boyfriend's in a heartening duet which sounded years-practiced.

They were quickly followed by every one of the Girl Scouts, who seemed to have no compunction about throwing themselves off of terrifyingly high precipices after a twenty-four-year-old _boy_ and his all-too-trusting girlfriend with nothing keeping them from crashing fatally to the hard and unforgiving ground but a few enormous leaves and flowers strung to them with braided vines.

Ted inhaled deeply and wondered just to what he had agreed when he had volunteered to transport the famously impulsive Phineas Flynn and his way-too-encouraging girlfriend, Isabella.

"Hey, Ted, you coming?" called a dynamic voice, and he opened his eyes to see Phineas swooping down toward him a bit frenziedly, but with a certain skill acquired from years of doing this sort of thing.

Ted sighed and swallowed his fears, hardly knowing when his feet left the ground because he was so distracted with his desperate prayer for protection. He had heard that Phineas Flynn was to be trusted no matter the wildness of his schemes, and Isabella and the so-called Fireside Girls seemed to demonstrate that quite undoubtedly, but a "totally-original-and-cool-leafy-and-flowery-hang-glider-thingy" was not a name that Ted Peters felt he could trust irrevocably.

When he finally had the courage to open his eyes, he found that the toes of his boots seemed to be walking on the miniscule tops of the multicolored trees below, and that he was, miraculously, _not_ falling toward them at an alarming speed.

"Way to go, Ted!" cheered Isabella.

"All right, pilot!" exclaimed Holly.

"Why was he so scared?" Katie asked Gretchen as they lunged through the air alongside one another.

"New guy," she answered by way of explanation. "Not familiar with the ways of Phineas and Ferb yet."

"Ah. Poor boy."

She and two other girls hummed their agreement.

"Come on, guys!" shouted Phineas, diving down in front of them all like a beacon. "Let's head for that compound!"

And a large, curve-beaked, boggle-eyed bird gave him a strange look as the young man passed, half-flying, half-falling, toward the compound far below them, which was steadily being embraced by the shadows of the setting sun.

* * *

As Ferb was fleeing and Phineas was flying, Doofenshmirtz was standing on his tiptoes with one arm raised high and Agent P balanced on his fingertips.

"Can you unlatch it, Perry the Platypus?" he asked the aquatic mammal above him.

Perry stretched his thick platypus fingers and tried desperately to reach enough to push back the latch of the heavy grate, but it was no use. Even with their combined height, the pit was still too deep to escape.

Suddenly, a shadow formed over them both, darkening the pit even more than before, and a voice sounding much like an elephant with a very bad cold slapped their ears.

"Ah, Doofy, so good to see you again."

Without warning, Perry suddenly found himself tumbling to the bottom of the pit as Doofenshmirtz dropped him in his bone-jolting surprise. The aquatic mammal shielded his eyes from the abrupt light and looked high above them, where the silhouette of a lab coat-clad figure stood at the edge of their prison. His chocolate eyes adjusted, and he realized it was a fellow evil scientist of Doofenshmirtz's whom he recognized as the nemesis of Agent K, the golden tabby and fellow agent of Monogram's division.

"And by 'good,'" the voice continued, the sound of it enough to make Perry want to break his pointy nose, "of course I mean bad."

"Rodney?" the German evil scientist gasped. "Is that you?"

"You know I hate to be called that," snapped the bald, wrinkly man spitefully. "My name is Aloyse Everheart Elizabeth Otto Wolfgang Hypatia Gunther Galen Gary Cooper von Roddenstein."

"Whatever, _Rodney_."

The man in question laughed aloud, though neither Doofenshmirtz nor Perry could fathom what he found so amusing.

"How are you, Heinz?" he guffawed, choosing to ignore the German scientist's egging.

"I'm in a dark, cold, damp pit with my least favorite person in the whole, wide world," spat Doofenshmirtz evenly, immediately turning to Perry and murmuring apologetically, "No offense, Perry the Platypus," and successively ending with a loud, "And I am late for my daughter's twenty-ninth birthday party. How do you _think_ I am, Rodney?"

Rodney laughed, louder than before and even more annoyingly.

"I am sorry, Doofy, that you're so uncomfortable down there," he said—well, more _honked_, really.

Doofenshmirtz crossed his arms implicitly and tapped his toe on the ground, the echoes of it drifting up to reach the other evil scientist's overlarge ears.

"Well, aren't you going to get me out?" he demanded when the bald scientist did not move.

"Hmmm…" Rodney rubbed his chin broodingly in answer. "Let me consult with my associates for a moment."

A bad feeling tightened in Perry's gut as seven more silhouettes formed on either side of the taller man, all wearing identical, white lab coats and all as infamously evil as their leader.

"What do _you_ think?" Rodney queried vainly to them, spreading his arms out in mock inquisition. "Should we pull dear Dr. Doofenshmirtz out of that dark, cold, damp pit?"

"I say…_leave him_!" laughed one, whose single, large curl of red hair stuck from the back of his head distinctively. Perry identified him as none other than Dr. Bloodpudding, nemesis of the bold Ellie the Eagle.

"I say feed him to the newts," volunteered an obese figure whose monocle glinted in the faint light. His name was, Perry recalled, Dr. Bloboodleston, his assigned agent the sly Herman the Hedgehog.

"I say give him even _more_ unenjoyable company!" exclaimed a bearded man to Rodney's left—Dr. Lightningshrak—and he raised his own tightly-bound nemesis, reliable Danny the Dog, in the air to demonstrate his point.

Doofenshmirtz cried out as nine more animal agents rained down on him amidst the evil scientists' manic laughter. Perry helped Kim the Kitty, Rodney's own nemesis, stand to her feet and obligingly handed Peter the Panda's hat to him when it fell to the dirty floor.

"You see, Doofy," began Rodney by way of explanation, as he began to walk around the edge of the pit ominously, "none of us are getting any younger, and so my partners here and I decided that we had spent enough of our years under your inadequate leadership, where we did little more than tussle with our nemeses and have our –Inators destroyed, and thought it was high time the League of Villainous Evildoers Maniacally United for Frightening Investments in Naughtiness moved on to new management. Consider yourself sacked, Dr. Doofenshmirtz."

Strident laughter of varying pitches punctuated this last.

"Wha—wait, wait, wait," stuttered Doofenshmirtz, pressing one hand to his temple as he attempted to sort it all out. "So what you're telling me is that you're firing me from the league _I_ started? Seriously? And, what, the eight of you are just going to eliminate all the other evil villains, is that it? You do realize eight can be considered an unlucky number, right?"

Rodney halted mid-step.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Doof," he assured vilely. "We've gotten a new ally to replace you."

As though cued by his words, a woman bearing a startling resemblance (at least, in Doofenshmirtz's mind) to Dr. Seuss' Grinch, with her short, white, stiffly-sprayed hair and her unpleasant countenance.

"Say hello to Professor Poofenplotz, Doofy," Rodney introduced her as she was applying more freakishly dark red lipstick.

Perry glanced to Pinky the Chihuahua, who shook his head in low defeat.

"A woman?" exploded Doofenshmirtz incredulously. "You throw me out of my leadership position in my _own_ league, you set yourself up in my place, and then you fill in the vacancy with a woman named Poofenplotz? What, is it a late April Fools or something here? Really."

"Oh, I assure you it is very real, Dr. Doofenshmirtz," articulated Poofenplotz, her overly-glossed lips gleaming in the weak light. "Furthermore, we do not have time to be dealing with you at the moment. We have important business to which we must attend. Such as tearing down present, peaceful society and building our own."

Doofenshmirtz gasped aloud.

"It was you who messed up my Newtinator!" he accused Rodney irately.

"Very good, Doofy," their leader chuckled. "I needed a mindless army that would obey me without question, and I must say you do have some good starting points…just not enough brains to build them up properly. With our army of mutated monsters, people will bow down before us in terror."

More nefarious laughter, which made all the agents around Perry glower.

"They're not going to name _you_ dictator of Danville, you disgusting, pompous _Schwachkopf_," Doofenshmirtz growled at him.

"Oh, that isn't what I'm after, Heinz," he clucked, wagging his finger as though addressing a child.

"Oh, no," agreed Dr. Diminuitive, twelve-year nemesis of Peter the Panda, as he adjusted his rectangular glasses. "Unlike with you, Doofenshmirtz, our sights are considerably broader with Dr. Roddenstein."

"We want the entire world," cackled a younger evil scientist, a Dr. Swampjuice, his hair, the unappealing color of vomit, falling into his eyes as he spread his arms dramatically so as to add theatrical effect.

The animal agents gaped in alarm, even while Perry was inwardly thinking to himself with spite that only his gifted boy, Ferb, could successfully pull off the green hair.

"And all the riches and glory that go along with it," Poofenplotz was adding, as she flamboyantly patted her hair down.

"Enjoy your stay down there with those little pests, Doofy!" waved Rodney as the nine of them—grinning dreadfully and scowling with glee—began to move back out of their sights. "I hope you can make friends with them—they're the last faces you'll ever see!"

Their laughter echoed painfully in the ears of their prisoners as they exited, shrouding the ten animals and one Doof in complete and utter darkness.

**To be continued**

* * *

_Sorry about so much focus on Doofenshmirtz in this chapter, but I really wanted this stuff to have a decent explanation, and I love the rivalry between Doof and Rodney from the series, so I thought Rodney's taking over L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. was fitting enough. Each of the other members of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. is an actual character from the shows, but most of them I had to name myself because their names have never been mentioned, and all the nemeses (except Perry and Pinky, of course) I assigned to each evil scientist myself as well. I couldn't find any information stating which animal agent went with which villain, so I just took a bunch of the agents that have already been introduced and went from there. There's much more of Phineas and Ferb in Chapter Five, so keep reading.  
Also, don't forget to let me know if you'd like to become part of the Resistance with us. :)_


	5. Chapter 5

_School starts tomorrow! *sobs* Unlike last year, however, I have determined that I will write something at least every other day. I nearly went bonkers last school year when my work made me too distracted to write. I will not surrender to Algebra II! *cue American flag background*  
Ahem. Anyway, since I made the last chapter mainly about Doof and Perry and the B-plot, this chapter is dedicated entirely to Phineas and Ferb and the A-plot. The next chapter will feature only Perry and Doof, so you won't have to miss them too much.  
Anyone who wanted to be an official (not) member of the Resistance in the Second Dimension, you can go to my profile and copy the little claim at the bottom to make it (un)official. Thanks again for the reviews!_

* * *

**Chapter Five**

"Are they still behind us?" squealed Baljeet.

"What do you think?" snapped Sarah in return, as she stooped to avoid being slapped in the face by a red-leafed branch.

Said branch whacked Mike full in the face just after her.

"Ow!"

"Come on, come on, come on!" barked Buford, hauling the obese man up with some slight difficulty and shoving him forward.

Rob settled for chopping the branch clean off the tree with his trusty penknife.

However, this decision of the cowboy deserved to be nearly disastrous, for due to the darkness of the jungle night, Ferb did not see the limb falling directly in front of him until it was too late to avoid. Despite his usual grace and his spindly, long legs, it was impossible for him to make the necessary leap so quickly, and his foot caught on the thick, leafy branch, sending him tumbling to the cold, damp ground just as an enormous shadow expanded across the entire area.

A pink chameleon shrieked in pure terror beside Ferb and disappeared into the bushes faster than a blink.

Ferb rolled onto his back with an almost inaudible groan and looked up at the massive silhouette of what was apparently a special breed of the transformed lizard. He struggled to scoot back through the brush away from it as yellow eyes gleamed at him in the darkness from a huge head measured several feet above the treetops; sharp, white, warped teeth protruded from beneath a curled, orange lip. Claws the size of Viking swords ripped the top third of nearby palm trees cleanly, spilling vast coconuts across the jungle floor.

Behind him, his five companions had halted and were looking on at their friend's plight in helpless horror.

"Ferb!" Baljeet cried frantically, as Buford pushed through the little group, shoving Rob and Mike out of his way violently in a blind attempt to reach the young engineer.

The jade-haired man shielded his face instinctively, knowing, as a terrible feeling twisted in his gut, that he would not be able to escape the gigantic claw as it raised in the air high above him in preparation to strike, its shadow in the bright moonlight stretching across the entire length of his body plus several feet roundabout him.

Then, like a miracle, a voice echoed against the trees around him over the noise of the monster's wet growls.

"Hey, slimy! Up here!"

Ferb's honey eyes flew open in shock. He must be dead already, he thought, for surely the person attached to that playful and wonderfully familiar voice couldn't be there with him, even as much as he wished him to be…and then his eyes caught sight of a figure swooping down on a hang glider made of a giant, blue leaf and several flowery vines before the beast's blazing eyes, and he knew such a contraption could belong to no one else.

Buford froze half-way toward his friend and gaped as eight other handmade aircrafts twirled like pestering flies all around the giant newt's head, shouting and booing in their leader's example. He wondered if he was hallucinating from deprivation of meatloaf, but then Baljeet's startled cry reached his ears and he wondered if they were _all_ dreaming.

Unable to bear standing on the sidelines, Ferb looked frantically around and spotted a heap of the fallen coconuts; scooping them in his arms, he joined in the fray, hurling the hard seeds expertly at the beast.

The monster roared, swiping fruitlessly at the gliders and attempting to dodge the painful blows of the coconuts to his bulging eyes, but it was hardly a minute before the irritated and bruised newt ran back in the direction he had come, tearing down various trees and whimpering like a kicked puppy.

The nine leaf-gliders swooped down with an exclamation of victory ringing through the air, their pilots releasing them and tumbling clumsily in rolling somersaults as they half-crashed onto the wet jungle ground. All leapt to their feet simultaneously in what could have been a rehearsed semi-circle just before Ferb, each face sunny with a delighted grin.

A young man with untamed, brick-red locks threw his arms in the air and was suddenly wearing a glittery top hat and matching gold-lined tailcoat.

"Tada!" A beat. "Oh, there you are, Ferb."

The young engineer's commonly inexpressive face was animated with a mixture of astonishment, curiosity, and some old-established look of amusement.

"_Phineas_." None of them could tell if it was a greeting or an exclamation.

"Hi there, brother mine," the young man in question responded with a friendly wave, his clothes having switched back to the orange-striped T-shirt and dark jeans of before.

"What _on earth_ are you doing here?" Ferb demanded, even while a feeling of pure relief and glad wonderment filled him as the sight of his ingenious brother began to process in his mind.

"Rescuing you, apparently," the boy—because he would always be a boy in Ferb's eyes—answered, stepping forward and gripping Ferb's shoulders firmly.

Blue eyes met brown, and for a second or two, the sounds around them seemed to grow distant and echoing as the read one another, just as they always had as children. In that single, connecting moment, it felt to both of them as though the past four months had never happened and that they had never been apart at all. It was as if the empty place within both of them was suddenly filled again.

As simply as that, worries melted away into hope, for they were together again now—Phineas and Ferb, the brothers from Danville who could do anything, escape any danger, solve any problem, and make it home in time for supper. They were untouchable, and in that second, they both remembered it—realized that, somewhere in their adulthood, it had faded out of their memories, but it wasn't gone, never gone—and two sets of eyes gleamed in mutual recognition of this fact.

"What _was_ that thing?" Ginger's voice pulled them back into the present.

"A giant newt with fangs and claws and laser-vision and a primal instinct to kill," was Rob's straight-faced reply.

"Oh, my," said Isabella, wide-eyed. "Are there a lot of them?"

"A whole island full," Baljeet answered miserably.

A gasp from one of the Fireside Girls.

"Baljeet!" Ginger rushed to him, but then stopped immediately with a faint blush. "Hello."

Baljeet appeared slightly startled, but replied with an equal sheepishness, "Hello, Ginger."

"Buford too?" questioned Isabella with surprise as she spotted him trying to squash some poor insect on a leave. "What are you guys doing here?"

"We were working here," responded Buford, for it seemed that Baljeet was somewhat distracted by the lovely Ginger.

"You never said you were working here," Sarah told him.

"Oh." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Didn't I? Well, I am. Why else would I come to such a nerd zone?"

Ferb rolled his eyes tolerantly, the corner of his mouth twitching with concealed amusement.

"What happened here, Ferb?" Phineas questioned, gesturing to the dark shrubbery around them. "Everything looks so…dead. And what's with the newt?"

Ferb shrugged, and it was enough for the redhead to comprehend the entire situation.

"Well," he said with an understanding nod, "where were you going?"

"Back to the resort," said Mike, twitching nervously. "We were hoping there would be boats or something to help us get _off_ this island."

"Sorry to break it to you," said Katie, "but we flew over the resort coming here, and we didn't see any boats."

"Not one," agreed Milly.

"Oh, _great_," howled Baljeet irritably. "So now we are all trapped here! Remind me again why you're here, anyway, Phineas?"

"Our planes crashed," said the young man. "Something stole the power from the girls' plane, and it hit ours over the western side of the island."

"That 'something' was probably the newts," said Sarah. "Ferb saw them working at the Cycle Control, a little ways from here. We have no idea what they're doing, though, or why."

"Yeah, I got that from Ferb," said Phineas, rubbing his cheek thoughtfully.

"When did Ferb tell him that?" Sarah whispered, bewildered, to anyone who could provide an answer.

"Oh, that is just a thing they do," supplied Buford casually, as he held was attempting to tie a string from his pocket to the leg of his captured bug. "It's like, you know, talk without talk. You get used to it."

Sarah turned to watch the pair again, with more inquisition than before. She, like the rest of them, had already gathered these two were certainly a unique duo, and she found herself wondering at them and all the friends they had with them here. She had never met a group of friends so different and yet so familiar with one another, nor a pair of brothers so evidently attached and accustomed to each other's character. Even with the mortal terror looming in the air, she could not help but be interested in the story behind these two and their small posse.

"So where do we go from here, Phineas?" Isabella was asking, and though some present knew nothing about this fiery-headed newcomer, something inexplicable drew them to listen to what leadership he would give.

"Well, I—"

He never finished, for at that very moment, huge and heavy footsteps reached their ears; Ferb spun his brother around, shoving him forward, and the group of them ducked down into nearby bushes.

Fifteen sets of eyes peered over the rainbow shrubs, watching as three man-sized newts passed them in the dark, unaware of their presence as they moved about their business. Phineas waited until he was certain the creatures could no longer hear him, and then he stood amidst his companions and spoke matter-of-factly.

"Well, they look like they know where they're going. Why don't we follow them?"

Mike leapt up, scattering a few jewel-colored leaves in every direction.

"Oh, sure why not follow the things trying to kill us? Oh, right—_because they're trying to kill us_!" He pulled his teddy out from his pocket and clutched it, glaring at Phineas with a disdain. "What are you, a complete moron? Just because you fly in out of nowhere on some stupid-looking device, you think you can put our lives at risk with your idiocy?"

Phineas halted Ferb's countering advance with a cool hand to his arm.

Sarah watched, somewhat taken aback by the sudden flare alighting Ferb's caramel eyes and fueling what appeared to be a whole other side to his ambiguous personality. Her eyes settled upon the younger-looking man beside him, and she took in his thick locks of scarlet-red hair, the small, shaven spots on either temple before his ears serving to add more individuality to his bearing, tanned skin dotted with adolescent freckles, azure eyes dancing with barely-contained energy. The atmosphere around him seemed ignited with some tenacious enthusiasm and wild imagination, almost like a solid wave emanating from his body, which was smaller and slightly stockier than his elder brother's. His presence seemed to kindle something in Ferb, and it was something indefinable, like an odd sort of protectiveness, but with a mixture of faith and hope in his smaller brother as well.

As she watched Phineas glance at the taller man, she saw the same sentiments flicker in his own eyes, and she wondered again just how much these two had experienced together.

Now that there was a quiet moment for her to examine him, something seemed to click in her mind, and she knew she had seen this newcomer somewhere before—multiple places, in fact, in magazines and posters all the way around the world.

"Phineas Flynn!"

All eyes turned to her at her unconventional outburst.

"You're Phineas Flynn," she declared, her eyes wide with a combination of astonishment and esteem, "world-class inventor. I've read so much about you in the past year—you're known as a prodigy in scientific circles."

"That's right," said the girl called Isabella—obviously _his_ girl, by the way she tensed beside him and her sweet tone changed instantaneously at Sarah's admiring praises.

"But," said Rob, "aren't you a little…"

"…young to be a world-class inventor? Yes—yes, I am. I get that a lot."

"Wow," was all the cowboy had to say to that.

"Look," Phineas said, his sensible tone arresting their attention easily, "if we're going to get off this island, we're going to need to figure out what's going on here first, because I don't think those creatures—whatever they're here for—are very likely to inform any nearby authorities that we're all stuck here. Am I right in thinking the only available radios are at Cycle Control?"

The group of technicians nodded.

"The phones and radios at the resort and in the town were going to be activated after the evaluation," said Baljeet. "They'd all be dead now, anyway, though, with no power."

"Then that settles it," concluded Phineas with a quick snap of his fingers. "Charging in there without a plan wouldn't be smart. We've got to figure this all out so that we all make it with minimal bruises."

It did not go unnoticed to any of his listeners that he gave slight emphasis to the word _"minimal."_

"To the town, then?" came Ferb's voice after a moment, with the air that he had already guessed his brother's idea the moment the young inventor himself did.

"Yep," was Phineas' response, with the air that he knew Ferb had already known his idea. "It's always better to have _too much_ compound-seizing, lizard-fighting ammunition rather than _too little_, I always say."

"There is one other detail that may be important, Phin," said Ferb as Rob began to lead the way toward the abandoned village, cutting away tree limbs in the dark.

"What's that, bro?" Phineas replied, using Ferb's shoulder for support as he stepped over an exceptionally large rock in his path.

"Well, the entire island is set for self-destruct in"—the young prodigy glanced at his watch, mentally calculating—"five hours and seventeen minutes."

Phineas stumbled momentarily, and Ferb's immediate react was to stand still and steady so that his brother could right himself.

"In that case," he said quietly, recovering quickly in true Phineas fashion, "I think we should probably _not_ waste time in the village."

Ferb nodded.

**To be continued**

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_Hope you liked!_


	6. Chapter 6

_A thousand apologies, my wunderkinds! As I've said in some of my other recent updates, Alice (my laptop) is broken and has been for two weeks now. I am now having to share our home desktop with my two sisters; one is twelve and the other is eight, so you can imagine how that's going so far. Lucky for me, I have one of the best friends in the world, and Bambi (not her real name, no, but my nickname for her) let me borrow her Mac so I could finish this chapter.  
Get ready for Doof and Perry...(Phineas and Ferb will return in Chapter Seven...wow what am I, a last episode of Merlin or something?). _

* * *

**Chapter Six**

Ellie the Eagle swooped down with elegance and landed beside Harry the Hedgehog, causing him to hide his head with instinctive fright for her large claws.

She chuckled—or gave the fowl equivalent, at least.

"Any luck?" Doofenshmirtz pressed, though the answer was obvious.

She became immediately somber, dropping her regal head and offering him one, brief shake of defeat. The lock of the grate above them was attached to a computer system, it seemed, so it mattered little how strong her claws here; there was no way to open it with brute force alone.

The rough-voiced German let out a half-sigh, half-growl of frustration and despair and dropped to sit with his back against the dank wall, resting his long arms atop his bony knees, his white lab coat standing out even in the dark shadows of their confinement.

"This is just fabulous," said he miserably, as all the animal agents crowded in around him, some of the less furry or feathery ones shivering in the chill.

Perry's chestnut eyes were soft as he moved to pat his nemesis' arm consolingly.

"What am I going to do, Perry the Platypus?" he said dismally. "I missed Vanessa's birthday last year, too, because I was in that Turkish jail. Do you remember that, Perry the Platypus? With the giant sarma-inator-thingy?"

Perry nodded, once, just to appease him.

"I was going to make up for that this year," he continued, eyes downcast. "See? See, look."

He reached into the worn pocket of his old lab coat and removed a small, white box with the words

_ABSOLUTE _

_by Victoria Wieck_

inked on the top. He flipped it over so that the lid came off in his hands and from it pulled a slightly smaller, black leather box, inside of which was a polished necklace with a silver chain and an ornate pendant arranged carefully on black velvet. The pendant was made of tiny, realistic diamonds arranged in a four-leafed pattern on a black background, in the center of which was a glittering ruby a strange, purplish-red shade. Each of the gemstones glittered even with so little light, and the black rock shone with rich luster, giving testament to the care with which the scientist had kept it. (1)

The animals looked on at the impressive piece which looked so extravagant in their dark and dirty pit. Millie the Mouse whistled admiringly.

"It's nice, huh?" said Doofenshmirtz with some small pride, pleased at their reactions. "I found it online. That's _real_ onyx and ruby right there, Perry the Platypus."

He flipped the lid closed again and placed the leather box back inside the larger one with care.

"Vanessa usually doesn't like to wear much jewelry," said he, "but I thought she'd like the necklace since it's, you know, black. And ruby is her birthstone. See, you can tell how much thought I put into it, can't you? I hunted for hours for the perfect thing. I even let Norm help me."

He sighed deeply, the delight fading from his umber-blue eyes and making them appear more a glum brown, his thin shoulders slumping against the wall once more.

"Now, I'll never get to give it to her," he said dolefully, running his bony and ridiculously long finger along the words on the lid; then, he raised his face to them, eyes glimmering a bit with a new, if sad, hope. "I know that jerk Rodney isn't going to let me out of here, but maybe she can still get it for her birthday, after all."

He quirked a half-grin in Perry's direction; it was the most sincere smile the aquatic mammal had ever seen on his nemesis' gaunt and usually sneering face, and for some reason it made his heart ache.

"You always get out, Perry the Platypus," he said, and for the first time, Perry heard a tinge of respect and even admiration in his tone. "Will you give it to her for me, when you escape? I don't want her to think I forgot her birthday on top of everything else."

Perry's overlarge eyes widened as Doofenshmirtz held the small box out to him; he was genuinely startled that his old nemesis would commit him with such a task. He had never considered what amount of trust the human must have in him, what with them being arch enemies by profession and all, but now as he looked into the gentle face watching him expectantly in the darkness of their cell, he realized that perhaps, just perhaps, there was some sort of love in their love/hate relationship. Completely unvoiced and very, very buried it might be, but it was there all the same. Perry could see that now, more clearly than ever before.

And, even more than that, he knew that whatever hidden affections Dr. D had for him were mutual. After so many years of companionship as close as the ones he shared with his boys, Phineas and Ferb, (an entirely different form of companionship, true, but companionship all the same) it seemed that they had both mellowed and acquired the same odd sort of fondness. Perhaps this was why he had never considered changing nemeses, as so many of his fellow agents often did; maybe some deep, deep, deep part of him had always known that this enemyship would someday blossom into true friendship, despite all odds.

Besides, he thought, it _was_ only his own nemesis who was down here with them now, regarded with the same aversion by the villains as the agents themselves were.

The rest of the evil men and women targeted by the O.W.C.A. were dangerous and had tried to harm others more than once, he knew, and yet he could not recall one time when Doofenshmirtz had tried to truly hurt anyone—besides Perry, of course, and occasionally Norm, but these were both more or less immune to his attempts, anyway. He could even perfectly remember how the evil scientist had appeared at just the right moment once, stopping the wild tirade of the Second-Dimension Doofenshmirtz and saving him, Phineas, and Ferb from being crushed by the fist of the giant robot the much more evil scientist had built.

Perry could not help but think that it was unfair for the man to be so brilliant and in possession of such genuinely amazing qualities, and to be loathed and hunted by everyone—the O.W.C.A. and L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. alike—and forced to accept his dark fate regarded as neither a hero nor a villain.

With that thought strengthening him, Perry took the box which Doofenshmirtz still held out for him, bent down, and pulled open the man's wide pocket.

"Perry the Platypus, what are you doing?"

Perry ignored his question, dropping the valuable box into his pocket meaningfully, then turning and whistling to his fellow agents.

"Perry the Platypus, how are you whistling with a bill?"

He ignored this as well, taking each of the hats from the animals as they offered them. He nodded to Ollie the Owl, who obligingly glided above him so that he could wrap his hands around the bird's thin but strong legs. He was careful not to move his head, ensuring that the pile of hats he was now wearing remained balanced, as Ollie raised him up to the grate, where he swung back and forth for several seconds to get the required momentum before letting go and grasping one of the iron bars above him instead.

Ollie swooped below him, Ellie appearing and flapping beside him, each there in case Perry should fall, though he knew he would not. Old as he may be, especially for a platypus, he was not feeble—whether in mind or body. And this new, almost unexplainable drive he felt to save his friends and defeat the bad guys was enough to make him feel five years old again. He felt as young and ambitious as though he was just starting out, but with all the sense and wisdom of an experienced field agent.

Though Major Monogram had always declared Perry would never grow old as an agent, the mammal had to admit to himself that he had been feeling tired and worn out as of late.

This all vanished the moment he reached through the bars and flung the first fedora at the large, modified –inator on the far wall, its specially-made, inflexible rim slicing through the metal and striking just the right wire on the very first blow. There was a mixture of electric and mechanical noises, and then the grate began to slide away, and he flipped with ease onto the floor above.

There was a cheer below, consisting of various animal noises and one "Way to go, Perry the Platypus!" and he got on his belly to help pull the next agent out.

Within minutes, every one of them was out of the cold prison and standing around Perry, and he could not help but stand taller than he had in what felt like years as he handed each of the old hats back to his fellowmen—er, pets—and fetched his own from the sparking and ruined computer frame.

Together, the agents rushed out of the room to take down the villains, and none of them tried to stop the evil scientist who took off right with them, for they had seen the way the famously clever Agent P of Monogram's Division had looked at the funny-looking human, and they knew he wasn't like the others.

**To be continued**

* * *

(1) If you'd like to see this necklace, it's here (just erase the spaces between each letter/number/symbol and search it): h t t p : / / j e w e l r y . h s n . c o m / v i c t o r i a - w i e c k - a b s o l u t e - a n d - b l a c k - o n y x - o c t a g o n - p e n d a n t - w i t h - 1 6 - c h a i n _ p f - 1 1 2 8 3 1 _ x p . a s p x ? & m r : r e f e r r a l I D = b 0 e 1 8 1 5 b – c 7 8 f – 1 1 e 0 – 8 9 1 e – 0 0 1 b 2 1 6 6 c 2 c 0 & r d r = 1 & c m _ m m c = S h o p p i n g % 2 0 E n g i n e - _ - S o r t P r i c e - _ - J e w e l r y - _ - 1 1 2 8 3 1

* * *

_Yes, okay, I admit it. I have a soft spot for Doof. Don't judge me._


	7. Chapter 7

_Whoa. How freakin' long has it been since I've updated? Feels like EONS. Good news, though: got my laptop back Saturday after over a month of fighting with my younger sisters over the desktop. This is good for me because I don't have to stalk my dad to get the piece of junk I call my laptop fixed anymore, and good for you because it means more frequent updates.  
Okay, so maybe it's mostly good for me.  
Still, I hope you enjoy this all-Plot A chapter..._

* * *

**Chapter Seven**

"Hello, sir, m-m-may I offer you some…fresh pineapple juice? It's the b-best on the island, I assure you."

"Erm," Phineas stammered somewhat uneasily to the smiling hologram, "no, thank you."

"A-a-are you sure?" the image urged with a bigger smile, seemingly not noticing the way his body and voice flickered unsteadily, as his eyes followed Phineas' movements around him with an eerily human-like accuracy. "It would be a…sweet…sweet treat for your lovely lady."

Isabella looked a bit unnerved as his quivering arm gestured casually to her.

"No," Phineas said again, pushing her in front of him as he noted her unease at the attention.

"And what about you, sir?" the hologram asked, his young, dark-toned face turning to Mike.

Mike the shuddered and pulled out his teddy again.

Even the freakishly cheery hologram looked uncomfortable at that.

"Okay, then," he relented, and then faced Buford, who was the next closest person to pass him in the unlit street. "You, perhaps, sir?"

"Get lost, nerd."

"This particular dessert shop is legendary for its chocolate pie, if that's more to your liking, sir."

"How can it be legendary if it hasn't even opened yet?" murmured Milly to Adyson, who was busy fixing her sash.

Before her fellow Fireside Girl could respond, however, the apparent spokesperson—er, spokeshologram—for the dessert shop stepped forward, his unpleasantly pleasant smile broadening further.

"I'm glad y-y-you asked, young lady," he exclaimed in a way that made Rob wince with anticipation.

From somewhere inside the shop, a recording of a banjo started playing.

"_Oooooh_."

"Please don't start singing," pleaded Sarah, though it was impossible to say whether the hologram heard her.

"_Many, many years ago…_"

Sarah sighed.

"_There was a pirate called Jolly Joe.  
He loved to sail the open seas,  
And raid the land's fine, rich cities,  
But most of aaaaaaaall,  
He loved his chocolate pie!"_

"Please stop," whimpered Mike, clutching his teddy.

"For the love of…" mumbled Rob, rubbing his forehead.

"This is utterly ridiculous," declared Baljeet, as the hologram began to dance around him, suddenly dressed as a pirate, complete with shoulder-parrot and eye patch.

"_Jolly Joe really loved his ship  
And his crew he loved to whip."  
_  
Ted, having briefly forgotten it was nothing but lights and lasers, leapt a foot in the air as the hologram cracked a whip at his backside.

_"He loved his stench and his friends the flies  
And he even loved all his thirty wives!  
But most of aaaaaaaaall—"_

He disappeared.

All breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thanks, Ferb," said Phineas, relaxing his arm from where he'd been holding Isabella protectively against his side.

The young engineer dropped the now-severed wire back to the ground beside the sign on the street with the words "ANGELICA'S DESSERTS" painted in bright lettering on the front, and returned his tool to its secure place in his pocket.

"That's the third one so far," complained Katie.

"Another one of those guys, and I swear I'm going to _look for_ one of those dragon-newts to fight," vowed Buford.

"What I wouldn't give if it had been those things that were shut off instead of the radios," said Ferb quietly.

Phineas smirked at him and nodded.

"Phineas, we can't even get into any of these buildings," said Isabella. "They're all locked-down too well. Maybe we should come up with something else."

Just as Phineas started to reply, he was interrupted.

"Do you hear that?"

Baljeet rolled his eyes and refrained from saying something to the effect of, _"Well, duh, Buford. Of course we hear all that weird noise coming from around the corner in the village square. What do you think, that we are all deaf? Or perhaps brainless? I'll have you know that I have enough brainpower in one portion of my brain to move enormous piles of pure lead!"_

He refrained, partially because he did not, in fact, have enough brain power to move enormous piles of pure lead, and partially because he knew he would lose 22% of the brain power he _did_ possess (which was considerable, mind you!) if he talked to Buford so bluntly.

"Yeah," said Phineas, tilting his head so that he might hear the faint sound better.

Ferb's green brows knitted together as he tried to distinguish the odd sounds. It could have been thunder, but it was constant, like the steady thrum of a heartbeat, and interspersed with noises of what sounded like movement.

As they all stood, silently trying to identify the strange noises, broad rays of blue light suddenly stretched vertically from before them, reaching up and striking the boundary of the dark cloud cover overhead. They moved in small semi-circles before vanishing and appearing again.

"Is it a…concert?" hazarded Baljeet.

"I doubt it," replied Phineas, looking as serious as he ever did. "Come on, gang."

Ferb followed closely behind his brother. He and his fellow evaluators had visited this village upon their first arriving on Bendita Isla, and he recalled that the center of the town, with its buildings intentionally made to look like native huts and its over-excitable, illusory vendors, was the place from which the lights and sound seemed to be emanating.

Surely enough, when Phineas and Ferb leant around one of the wooden huts to get a glance, he recognized the intricate fountain, with all its various styles and shapes of tiki heads spitting out water in all different directions. The fountain would have been the most eye-catching part of the scene at any other time, but now, the dozens of different newts shifting around it served to take away a bit of its thunder.

"Whoa," murmured Phineas in amazement at the brightly colored creatures. "What are they all here for?"

"What is it?" hissed one of the Fireside girls from behind them.

"Newts," said Phineas.

"And a lot of them," added Ferb.

"It looks like they're waiting for something," the redheaded inventor guessed.

Even as he spoke, a huge monitor which hung on what appeared to be a sort of courthouse flickered to life, confirming his theory when a man, bald with the sharpest ears they had ever seen and the most ridiculous-looking eyes which bulged behind his oval glasses, appeared on it, sitting at what looked to be a desk and looking very in-charge-ish. So enormous was the monitor, every disgusting blemish stood out in shocking clarity on his aged face. Long wrinkles deep as chasms cut across his forehead, pulling large flaps of his flesh nearly over his eyes; Phineas briefly found himself wondering if said flaps would obstruct his sight should the glasses be removed, for the rims appeared to be the only thing holding the skin above his line of vision. Age spots and warts were large and obvious on all other visible skin. The only truly reasonable feature perceptible was the crisp-white lab coat the old man wore…at least, it could be assumed it was a lab coat, but the epaulettes and double rows of silver buttons down the front made it somewhat difficult to definitely identify.

"Yikes," said Irving. "Who's the pharmacist?"

Phineas looked down.

"Irving? How long have _you_ been here?"

The weird boy—now a weird college student, actually, Phineas corrected mentally—stood from where he'd been kneeling in front of them, also peering around the hut at the scene, and adjusted his purple-framed glasses, gripping a yellow film camera in his left hand and with a small notebook sticking out of his shirt pocket.

"Been here, specifically?" he inquired, scratching at his short, carrot-colored hair. "Approximately six seconds."

"No." Phineas blinked. "I mean how long have you been….Oh, never mind. Ferb, any idea who that guy on the screen is?"

Ferb, who had stepped back a few feet when he realized Irving's face was mere inches from his leg, leaned around his brother again to get another look at the peculiar sight. At the same time, an obnoxious voice, sounding much like an antique car horn, in his opinion, began to echo from the speakers set strategically around the village.

"Excuse me, hello. Is this thing on?"

When the tall engineer looked at Phineas and shrugged apologetically, Mike took the chance to sneak a glance.

"That's not the newt guy from before," he declared (he'd been the only one out of them to see the man called Doofenshimrtz). "The other one had some sort of German accent, and his head was pointier."

"Great," said Baljeet, drearily, as though the whine had finally drained from his voice. "More questions, less answers."

"Don't worry, Baljeet," said Ginger comfortingly from beside him. "We'll figure out it."

The Indian actually smiled at this, welcoming her warm hand on his arm.

Buford rolled his eyes unsympathetically from Baljeet's other side and punched the smaller man's shoulder, hard, and felt much lighter when he saw he'd ruined their _lovey-dovey_ moment.

"Yeah," he barked, "and maybe we'd figure it out a lot quicker if you'd shut up so we can hear what this pharmacist guy is saying."

Baljeet's eyes flashed at him, the same subdued way they had when both were boys.

"Yes," said he, "well, maybe if you weren't so indecently _loud_—"

"Guys! Sh!"

They looked up to see Phineas waving to them with one hand, as he and Ferb bent around the hut again to listen to what the man's honking voice was saying to the newts assembled before them.

On the screen, Rodney was grinning maniacally and looking immensely proud of himself as he beheld his followers with glee.

"Greetings, my minions! It is I, Aloyse Everheart Elizabeth Otto Wolfgang Hypatia Gunther Galen Gary Cooper von Roddenstein, your leader. I have an announcement for all personnel."

"Actually, Dr. Roddenstein, I think 'newtonnel' would be a more accurate word," came a contradictory voice from somewhere off-screen, and the view widened to reveal eight more figures—some even _more_ unappealing than their seated leader (if that was even possible), all of different sizes and ages and levels of evil.

"_Really_, Dr. Diminuitive." Rodney did not appear impressed or interested in this remark, and returned his attention back to the camera.

"First, however," he went on, his pale green eyes smiley behind his glasses, "I would like to thank everyone for the fantastic job your are all doing, and assure you that the amoral plans of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. are still very much underway. Our strategy to transform this so-called Bendita Isla into a mass weapon of indestructible destruction is steadily approaching completion."

Sarah nudged Rob, nearly knocking him over.

"_That's_ what they were doing back at Cycle Control!" she whispered.

"However," Rodney was saying, his eyes darkening, "we have reached a slight problem. It seems several prisoners have escaped."

He pressed a blinking blue button on the metal desk where he sat; immediately, the view changed to a security camera's screenshot the hue of a dull green, pixels aligning to create a slightly blurred image. It was a frozen shot of several animals, looking rather too intelligent and wearing identical brown fedoras, and a man, who was not wearing the fedora as his companions, but a white lab coat similar to the villains'. All were caught in various poses of running, with a smoking computer in the background behind them.

"_That's_ the other newt guy," recognized Mike.

"I thought he was the bad one," said Sarah thoughtfully. "Why is this other newt guy—Roddenstein—calling him a prisoner?"

"Hey, that one kind of looks like Perry," noted Phineas, affection flickering in his eyes as he remembered his beloved pet, despite their predicament.

"Oh, yeah," Isabella agreed in amazement, squinting at the teal platypus who was at the feet of the man in the video. "Only I don't think I've ever seen Perry mid-way through a karate chop like that before."

Phineas considered the platypus' unusual stance for a moment.

"No, I guess not," he agreed. "Perry's just a platypus, after all; he doesn't do much."

Had the two not been chatting about how it could _not_ have been Perry at that very moment, they—and Ferb, who was, as always, listening closely to what his brother said—may have heard Rodney as he stated informatively,

"The prisoners are named as follows: Kim the Cat, Ellie the Eagle, Peter the Panda, Alex the Alligator, Millie the Mouse, Herman the Hedgehog, Ollie the Owl, Pinky the Chihuahua, Danny the Dog, Perry the Platypus, and Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, who also answers to 'Doofy.'" (The last part obviously added for his own, sick humor, if the self-satisfied _honk_ of laughter at the end meant anything.)

As it happened, however, the closest the platypus' loved ones came to discovering his secret at the time was when Phineas chuckled to them with the same breath of his preceding sentence,

"…Hey, it almost sounded like he said 'Perry the Platypus.'"

"We believe," continued Rodney, who had reappeared, "that these prisoners are still present on our blimp, but should any of you spot them, do not hesitate to kill on sight. They could pose a great threat and ruin our plan to take over the world."

"Take over the world?" repeated Gretchen fearfully.

"That is all," ended Rodney.

"Now get back to work!" added a mad-sounding voice, presumably one of the other pharmacists, just before the transmission cut off.

As newts began to shuffle back to their duties in the square, the group knelt behind the building in hiding.

"Phineas," said Isabella excitedly, "what are we going to do? He's going to use the power on this island to fulfill his crazy plans!"

Phineas' brows knitted in thought, and then he looked up, a familiar fire alighting his eyes as his hand rested on Ferb's shoulder.

"We have to stop him," he vowed, and then, "Ferb, get your tools ready. I know what we're going to do today!"

**To be continued**

* * *

_Okay so yes, there is a reason it doesn't surprise Ferb to hear "Perry the Playtpus" is one of the animal agents. There is a reason for this, which I may explain in a separate story soon...  
In the meantime, the more reviews, the faster the updates..._


	8. Chapter 8

_So this morning I woke up, started to write an original story of mine that I've been working on, and suddenly, out of nowhere, it hit me.  
"Did I seriously _not_ publish that new Phineas and Ferb chapter I've had written?"  
So I looked in the file, and sure enough, there it was, sitting all patient, waiting for me to grow a brain.  
Sorry about that. I hope the content makes up for the lateness, though! And special thanks to all my reviewers, as always._

* * *

**Chapter Eight**

"Dr. Roddenstein, you might want to take a look at this, sir."

The wrinkly scientist squinted as he ran his eyes over the security operatives of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N., trying to distinguish which of them had spoken, though they all looked nearly identical in their lab coats, so it took him a good thirty seconds and several wrong choices before he finally made it to young Dr. Chichiham's chair.

The young woman leaned out of his way so that he could see the screen clearly past his pointed nose. When the evil leader spotted eleven figures dangling out of the bottom of the blimp, his reaction was immediate.

"Dr. Bloboodlesten! Get the chainsaw!"

* * *

"Not that I don't trust you as far as I can throw you, Perry the Platypus, but are you really sure this is safe?"

As was his typical response to such inquiries from his worrisome nemesis, Perry's only reply was to roll his eyes as he gripped the rope with both of his small, furry hands once he made sure Kim the Cat had slid down far enough to avoid. Actually, if one was to be accurate, it wasn't a rope at all which he was clutching, but several thousand napkins from the new L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N.'s dining hall aboard the blimp, all braided together to form a very white, very _long_, and very papery rope which stretched all the way from the bottom of the blimp to the azure sea below.

"I mean," continued the German scientist as he moved out of the way for Herman the Hedgehog to continue after Perry, his chestnut locks blowing around his narrow head like some wild aura in the high-altitude wind, "I would expect it to hold you and all the animal agents—that Alex the Alligator is way better at braiding than he looks; who would've thought?—but I think I weigh considerably more than you, you know. I'm not sure if this is such a good idea for me." (1)

Perry halted and peered around Harry's small body, eying Doofenshmirtz with one brow raised.

The scientist, who had always been exceptionally good at reading the aquatic mammal (but had never let himself dwell on that so he wouldn't have to face how truly weird such a talent was), shot Perry a scornful look in reply, crossing his wiry arms over his chest in a puerile gesture of defiance.

"No, Perry the Platypus; just for that look, I'm not going at all. What do you think about that, Mr. Let's-just-risk-Heinz's-life-whenever-we-please? I don't have any sense of duty here; none whatsoever. I can just hang out here until it all blows over one way or another and it won't bother me the slightest bit that I didn't help you defeat the bad guys. Nope; not a bit."

He'd scarcely gotten the last word out before there was a mechanical roar from behind him, and the animal agents still close enough to the top of the napkin-rope to hear it froze, their hats being the only things wavering in the wind, as a dark form suddenly appeared behind Doofenshmirtz, wielding a large, boisterous object above his head.

Doofenshmirtz barely had time to move before the chainsaw was plunging down upon the spot where he had been standing a mere second before.

"Hey!" he exclaimed indignantly from where he lay on his stomach a few feet away. "What was that for?"

Bloboodlesten did not give him a word of answer, though whether it was because he could not or because he didn't think it was worth it, we may never know.

Instead, the evil, obese L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. affiliate turned back toward the opened hatch, where all ten of the animal agents were still dangling on the swinging napkin-rope, all watching helplessly as he lowered the alive chainsaw down to the very top of the paper chain and grinned menacingly, his left eye narrowing with despicable glee behind his tiny monocle.

Perry tensed, his every instinct screaming at him to move, but his brain telling him that he would not be quick enough...the blade was too close...they were all going to plummet to their deaths...

Just as he was closing his eyes in readiness, a cry erupted over the sound of the rushing wind.

"Oh, no you don't, you big jerk!"

Immediately, Bloboodlesten was being yanked backwards, his plump face falling in shock as he disappeared inside the blimp. Perry started as he heard the chainsaw hit something solid, and then a hoarse, all-too-familiar sounding scream filled his ears. Without stopping to think, he flipped upward, over Harry the Hedgehog, and through the hatch, all the while silently pleading in platypus that that scream did not mean what he thought it did; if it did, Bloboodlesten was going to have to handle a vengeful Agent P for what he'd done.

And there was no reasoning with Perry the Platypus when he was truly angry.

When he landed, however, he was unprepared for the sight which met him. Somehow, Doofenshmirtz had managed to bash Bloboodlesten on the head with a piece of metal which had been lying around the place, and the large villain was now lying in a heap on the cold floor like lab-coat wearing blob. That was not the sight which startled Perry most, however, but it was that the chainsaw, still on full-blast, was slicing through what appeared to be a large motor.

A large, very important motor, it seemed.

"Run, Perry the Platypus! _She's going to blow_!"

Perry scarcely had time to feel relieved that he recognized the overexcited voice before Doofenshmirtz, now apparently not the slightest bit worried about the strength of the napkin-rope, had scooped him up under his arm and dove out the hatch, nearly knocking off a duly surprised Harry the Hedgehog as he grasped the napkin chain with one hand and held tightly to Perry with the other.

Perry did not have the presence of mind to feel bemeaned by the treatment, for Doofenshmirtz was shouting down the rope to the other animals (and to Ellie the Eagle and Ollie the Owl, who were hovering nearby),

"Go! Climb down! Hurry! It's going to EXPLODE!"

"_DOOFENSHMIRTZ_!"

* * *

Rodney had barely choked out the enraged cry before the screen quivered and blackened entirely. He slapped it once as hard as he could manage (while envisioning his German adversary's pointy face, of course), and it was not until the computer monitor tumbled to the floor with a resounding _crash_ that he realized the room was already filling with smoke.

"Come on, Dr. Roddenstein!"

Inkillydon yanked on his arm violently and led him through the masses of people and newts to the exit, while the walls of the Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. blimp began to shudder and collapse around them.

From where they were all piled into the small emergency air crafts, all mashed together so that various faces and other body parts were pressed against the glass windows unattractively, all the members of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. who had been on the blimp (and the faction of newts which had been doing said members' work for them) could see the eleven small dots sliding down the napkin-rope hanging from the bottom of the quickly-collapsing craft.

Rodney squinted behind his glasses until he caught sight of the white lab coat flapping like disfigured wings, and he moved his tiny plane (which was careening from side to side in the air due to the overwhelming weight of himself and his many minions) close enough in to see the teal-furred agent in the German's arms, whose golden-orange bill was angled in an expression of pure alarm as he held his fedora on his head with one thick-fingered hand and gripped Doofenshmirtz's sleeve with the other.

It did not go unnoticed by the exceedingly evil scientist that Doofy was gripping the aquatic mammal tightly to his side in an almost-protective hold as he and the other animal agents dropped down in a desperate race for the ocean below.

Though it was an established fact that he and his fellow L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. members had, in fact, turned against Doofenshmirtz, he could not help but think it as he watched the blimp crash into a power station on the western side of the Bendita Isla.

_Traitor._

* * *

"Remind me again what we're doing?"

Contrary to its usual harsh derision, Buford's rumbling tone held only honest curiosity as he leaned over Rob's shoulder to get a better view of Phineas and Ferb's undertaking.

Phineas did not look up from where he was knelt on one knee, watching as Ferb pressed various tools into the wire workings of a flat-screen television which had, up until the last few moments, been mounted impressively on a colorful wall in one of the deluxe suites at the Tortuga Resort.

"That guy Roddenstein is trying to use the power and technology of Bendita Isla to create a super-weapon of some sort," explained the young man patiently. "If we can use some of the stuff around to destroy all the places he's taking power from, maybe we can stop him."

"Or at least slow him down," added Ferb, barely glancing up before resuming his skillful work on the rigged television.

"Brilliant," Rob said, though whether he was being serious or skeptical, nobody knew or cared.

The Fireside Girls hummed in simultaneous agreement, and Isabella was just opening her mouth to voice her own strong concurrence, when there was a sudden rumble from some distance away, and the roof of the high-class resort on which they stood began to shudder beneath their feet.

"What was that?" Sarah said, though she was expecting it when no one answered.

Ferb did not react to the odd disturbance, but he and Phineas continued to work ever-more quickly on the television so that they might toss it onto the pile of altered electronics and move on to destroying the next location. The rest of the large group, however—most of whom had been helping in the demolition by dumping handfuls of electrical objects onto the cement ground—moved to the edge of the roof and looked out over the shiny buildings dotted with bending palm trees in between.

"Whoa," Baljeet whistled at the sight which met them, "what in the world is happening out there?"

Phineas, unable to contain his curiosity at that, rose and moved to peer over Isabella's shoulder.

"What?"

He did not need an answer, and none came, for the weird way the lights of the village in the distance flickered on then off again in the daylight like some powerful tsunami of energy coming straight for them was answer enough.

Irving snapped a picture with his yellow camera.

It took Phineas all of two seconds to realize what was happening, and his boyishly handsome face fell to pure, unadulterated terror, whipping around in a sudden motion and crying out in a voice saturated with panic,

"Ferb! Get away from the—!"

It was too late, however, and just as his the green-haired engineer raised his head at his brother's tone, every bulb in the inoperable resort suddenly burst to life in an explosion of blinding light and the not-yet disassembled stereo near them roared with ear-splitting volume some catchy Hawaiian theme. Phineas cried out with the bone-jarring impact of it all striking his senses at once, and he collapsed to his knees, pressing his left hand against his ear instinctively and reaching blindly for Isabella with his right.

In the next second, it was over, the room once again dimming and all noise cutting off as instantaneously as it had begun as the shock of energy continued on its way through the rest of the island.

Head still ringing, Phineas leapt to his feet, swaying slightly before righting himself.

"Ferb!" he called out over the noise of his companions' groaning as they, too, struggled to stand upright.

The blurriness of his vision cleared, and for what may have been the first time of his life, he was rendered speechless with horror.

**To be continued**

* * *

(1) I'm aware Doof probably isn't heavier than an alligator, but this_ is_ Phineas and Ferb's world, after all, so I'm just gonna go with it.


End file.
